NEWPORT NEWS — The woman was beaten, choked and raped until she lost consciousness.

"I am going to [expletive] kill you," the attacker told her July 2, 2011, according to her statements to police. "You are going to die in the ground tonight."

The woman awoke buried under leaves in a ditch. She ran naked into traffic on Jefferson Avenue, begging for someone to help her. Help finally arrived, but the trauma of that July day didn't end once she made it to the hospital.

Unbeknownst to her, there were two lives inside her womb.

The sentence

Newport News Circuit Judge H. Vincent Conway Jr. sentenced her attacker, Jorge Perez-Paez, to life plus 50 years in prison Thursday. Perez-Paez, 24, was sentenced to life on a rape charge and 25 years each on abduction and sodomy charges. The victim testified for nearly 10 minutes during the sentencing hearing.

The 27-year-old woman was attacked as she walked along Jefferson Avenue near Port Warwick just before 3 a.m. She was walking alone because she had just gotten into an argument with her fiancé and was trying to cool off when Perez-Paez rode by on a bicycle, according to the statement of facts.

The Daily Press doesn't identify rape victims.

Three weeks after the attack, the woman sent a message to her attacker in a news conference: "I didn't die," she said. "I'm not going away. Someone will find you."

After the attack, Perez-Paez's bike was recovered. Police were able to release a sketch of Perez-Paez and also a photo of his bike. DNA evidence was sent to the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, and a profile was submitted to the national DNA index. The database identified the DNA as a match for Perez-Paez, who had been investigated in a similar assault in Fresno, Calif., according to police.

The DNA hit led to police arresting and charging Perez-Paez in August 2011.

Fresh wounds

The woman testified that she took a pregnancy test the day of the rape, and it came back negative. Three weeks later, she took another test. It came back positive.

"Due to the time frame, they couldn't tell me whose child it would be," she said doctors told her.

She was given two options: She could have an abortion or wait until later in her pregnancy to take a DNA test to determine who the father of the child was. If she chose to wait until later to find out who had fathered her child — her fiancé or Perez-Paez — an abortion at that stage could have prevented her from having children in the future.

"I chose to have the abortion," she said crying. "I did the DNA test and it came back that it was mine and my husband's … pregnant with twins. I never got to see my babies. All I've ever wanted since I was a little kid is to be a mother — and it was just taken from me."

The thin woman wept during most of her testimony, stopping at times to compose herself.

She is a changed woman, she testified. She is angry — easily agitated by little things now. The affect of the attack is extremely personal — the newly married woman says intimacy is difficult with her husband.

"I don't like my husband to touch me," she said through tears. "If he does, he has to ask permission before we ever do anything and it makes it hard for him. Most married people want to be with each other — we don't get to experience that because I have flashbacks and don't want anyone to touch me."

The couple was able to have another child, a daughter who is now 11 months old. The joys of motherhood have been clouded by constant reminders of the rape. She said her daughter doesn't sleep in her own bedroom and won't for awhile.

"She will stay in our room until she is big enough to scream for help, because I don't want anyone to hurt her like I've been hurt," she testified.

Some of her physical wounds still remain. Her eye socket and her nose were broken during the attack. She can't breathe through her right nostril, but says surgery would only give her a 50/50 chance of repair.

Being alone and the darkness of night frighten her.

"I'm afraid something is going to happen to me again," she said, "that someone will try to kill me while I'm sleeping."

"He saw her for an instant … in an instant he snatched her and dragged her off the sidewalk into the grass over a service road, pulled her into the trees … where she would lose more than she ever thought possible," she said.

Flythe told Conway that the attack was too severe to sentence Paez-Perez within the state sentencing guidelines, which called for 9 to 31 years in prison.

"The crime wasn't just brutal," Flythe said. "It was truly a nightmare that she had to live through with her eyes wide open, though he repeatedly tried to close them forever."